The signatures of Louis, Fenelon, and Flechier were attempted to be proved also by certificates from M. Daunou, M. Villenave, and other eminent French antiquaries; but as they were living, such certificates were of course rejected. If these writings, then, _were_ forgeries, they must have been most skilfully executed; and, in fact, the question as to their genuineness or spuriousness excited--as we learn from Mr Swinton,--great interest and much discussion in Paris. It may also be here mentioned, as a somewhat singular circumstance, that, a few years previously to this trial--as we also learn from Mr Swinton--a series of portraits and autographs of illustrious Frenchmen, published by Delpech, (Quai Voltaire, Paris,) contained _fac-similes_ of the writing of Louis XV., Fenelon, and Flechier, exactly resembling the writings on the map attributed to them;--and in the specimen given in that work of the writing of Louis XV., which was taken from the collection of M. Villenave above-mentioned, occur the very _two expressions_, and _similarly spelled_, which are found on the map--"les c_e_rconstances presentes"--and "or_e_g_e_nale." Mr Swinton speaks of this coincidence as "remarkable;" but to us it appears not at all so. What is easier than to conceive that, if the writings on the map were forgeries, the fabricator had before him at the time these very fac-similes, and astutely determined to introduce the expressions in question, with the peculiar spelling? Let us now recur for a moment to the excerpt charter of the 7th February 1639. On the assumption that it was a forgery--_what becomes of the writings on the map of De l'Isle?_ They then speak of--are bottomed on--a document of which there is no earthly trace whatever, except in a forged extract! If the excerpt be annihilated, so is the charter! And if so,--in the name of holy truth and ordinary common sense, how comes it, but by a double forgery, that we find on the map of De l'Isle, produced for the first time in 1837, _all the essential elements of that charter_, as far as sufficed to further the interests of the prisoner--viz., the altered destination of the titles and property, set forth _verbatim et literatim_, in conformity with the terms of the forged excerpt? "How, but through the evidence of one in the possession of this first forgery of the charter," asked the Solicitor-General,[43] "could the persons who executed the second arrive at such a close and perfect correspondence with the terms and effect of the former, as has been exhibited through the whole contents of the last?" [43] Swinton, p. 237.